Hamilton, AndrewKhan, Sana2019-01-032019-01-032018-10-18http://hdl.handle.net/10657/3895This project that seeks to understand the significance of oxidative stress in patients with schizophrenia. The goal of this experiment is to develop an easy, clinical measure of oxidative stress through plasma probing. Because increasing evidence reveals schizophrenia is highly related to oxidative stress, this test would potentially allow for a simpler diagnosis of psychosis/schizophrenia through blood tests. The Ir-reducing assay could discriminate between healthy and schizophrenia patients and correlate to disease severity. The plasma samples that are being tested are from various patients with bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder and schizophrenia. The basis of the experiment is to use an Iridium-based strong oxidant K2IrCl6 which can detect reducing species. As electrons are transferred from the reducing species or antioxidants in the plasma to the Iridium complex an optical signal is generated. The strength of the signal is dependent on the strength of the reductant and also correlates to the amount of oxidative stress. Schizophrenia patients are expected to have more oxidative stress, which could potentially be revealed by this simple analysis of a patient’s plasma sample. This project was completed with contributions from Carol Tamminga from the UTSouthwestern Department of Psychiatry.en-USThe author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).Poster